This collection of essays provides an up-to-date introduction to 'proto-industrialization': the growth of export-oriented domestic industries which took place all over Europe between about 1500 and 1800. Often these industries expanded alongside agriculture, without advanced technology or centralized factories. Since the 1970s, numerous theories have been proposed, arguing that proto-industrialization transformed demographic behaviour, social structure and traditional institutions, and was a major cause of capitalism and factory industrialization. European proto-industrialization summarizes the theories and criticisms, and includes a reconsideration of the original theories, and chapters written by experts on different European countries. It provides an essential guide to an important, yet often confusing, field of economic and social history.

This collection of essays provides an up-to-date introduction to "protoindustrialization": the growth of rural export industries that took place all over Europe between about 1500 and 1800. Since the 1970s some historians have argued that protoindustrialization broke down traditional society and prepared the way for the industrial revolution. These studies survey the resulting debates and research and provide an essential guide to an important, yet often confusing field of economic and social history.

Between the end of the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, the long-established structures and practices of European agriculture and industry were slowly, disparately, but profoundly transformed. Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, first published in 1997, narrates and analyzes the diverse patterns of economic change that permanently modified rural and urban production, altered Europe's economy and geography, and gave birth to new social classes. Broad in chronological and geographical scope and explicitly comparative, the book introduces readers to a wealth of information drawn from thoughout Mediterranean, east-central, and western Europe, as well as to the classic interpretations and current debates and revisions. The study incorporates scholarship on topics such as the world economy and women's work, and it discusses at length the impact of the emergent capitalist order on Europe's working people.

The rise of China is no doubt one of the most important events in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Mainstream economics, especially the institutional theory of economic development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions, is highly inadequate in explaining China's rise. This book argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China's growth miracle and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current 'backward' financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China's spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental shortcomings of the institutional theory and mainstream 'blackboard' economic models, and provides more-accurate reevaluations of historical episodes such as Africa's enduring poverty trap despite radical political and economic reforms, Latin America's lost decades and frequent debt crises, 19th century Europe's great escape from the Malthusian trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.

Sample Text

State Corporatism and Proto-Industry focuses on the WÜrttemberg worsted industry, an example of a "proto-industry" that arose in many parts of Europe preceding factory industrialization. It has been argued that these proto-industries broke down traditional society but this book suggests otherwise. With the help of the state, corporate institutions such as merchant companies and rural guilds, regulated every aspect of rural life and thus profoundly shaped early modern European economic, demographic and social development.